Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced Friday, April 20, that it will stop providing drugs to women for abortions in the first nine weeks of pregnancy – a method used in about a quarter of the provider’s abortions in Wisconsin – citing a new state law that criminalizes a physician’s failure to follow a protocol laid out by the law.

The change was applauded by Right to Life Wisconsin, which pushed for the legislation. But it set off a political firestorm among Democrats seeking to unseat Gov. Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, one of the gubernatorial candidates, condemned Walker and Republican lawmakers for requiring physicians to “follow medical practices set out by politicians.”

Barrett said the new law invades women’s privacy, interferes with the patient-physician relationship and “is designed to throw up road blocks to reproductive choice.”

He called it one of several Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. The state also stopped funding to Planned Parenthood to provide breast- and cervical-cancer screenings, contraception, and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.

“The fact is, under Gov. Walker, Wisconsin is helping more women screen for breast and cervical cancer than ever before through the Wisconsin Well Woman Program and employment discrimination remains illegal in our state,” the statement said. “Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett wants to take Wisconsin backward and is distorting the facts to score cheap political points.”

Officials with Planned Parenthood said they’re changing their policy because the new state law requires that women who are undergoing a nonsurgical abortion to visit the same doctor three times, and that the doctor establish the woman isn’t being coerced into the procedure.

The new law is “vague” and “problematic,” said Nicole Safar, public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. It creates compliance burdens for physicians and attaches a felony crime to noncompliance, she said.

“It’s too ambiguous to put our doctors at risk,” she said, referring to the law as “one more piece of very anti-women’s health” legislation.

Planned Parenthood, the state’s oldest and largest reproductive health care provider, still will provide surgical abortions. The new law also does not affect emergency-contraception medication that women take within five days of intercourse to prevent, rather than terminate, pregnancy.

“People mistakenly believe that women who have chemical abortions pop a pill and, magically, they are no longer pregnant. Yet, FDA protocol for use of this two-drug regime is three to four visits to a doctor with close supervision,” Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, said in a prepared statement.

“With the advent of webcam abortions, now taking place at Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa and Minnesota, instead of this close supervision, women discuss their abortion over a webcam without a physical exam by a doctor.”

The abortion medication, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000, terminates pregnancy by blocking progesterone receptors in the uterus, leading to a breakdown of the uterine lining. Progesterone is necessary to maintain a pregnancy.

Questions have been raised about the medication’s safety, and the FDA has acknowledged a handful of deaths associated with the drug, as well as hundreds of hospitalizations and infections.

The suspension of drug-induced abortions “will result in another decline in Wisconsin abortions, which is great news for mothers and babies,” Lyons said.

Planned Parenthood said every decision to terminate a pregnancy is unique to the circumstances of the woman, and it did not speculate on how the number of abortions might change as a result of no longer making medication-induced abortions available.

Some women prefer a medication-induced abortion to a surgical abortion because it can occur in the privacy of their home and is less invasive, Safar said.

“Regardless of how many women this ends up impacting, the bigger message is this is politicians in state government compelling women to have a surgical procedure rather than a medication procedure that might be better for her,” Safar said.

NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin executive director Lisa Subeck described the law as unnecessary for abortion providers.

“In just one year, we have seen how women can lose ground in their health care options as a result of who holds power,” Subeck said in a statement. “This is what happens when out-of-control politicians like Scott Walker practice medicine without a license and interfere in the relationship between doctors and their patients. In the end, it is women who lose out.”

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